Waiting for the trade, once again

I'm wondering what the comic companies' feeling is with regard to marketing their trade paperbacks.

On the one hand, it seems as if the regular old comics are the ones they want folks to get into the actual habit of buying--the ones where we can anticipate a particular comic being out at a particular time (well, ideally, issues of lateness aside) and plan to look for it and buy it.

On the other hand, once a book is out in trade, it seems like they do plan to keep putting the trades out on that title. (Apart from older stories where they seem to go with specific storylines taken outside of their regular context.) Presumably they want the trade audience to get into the regular-buying habit as well.

Are they considering trade readers and floppy readers to be two separate audiences? Because I know of a lot of comic readers who buy some of each, depending on various considerations. I do. I started buying trades to catch up on books I hadn't read before, and have moved on to buying some of my current titles in that form--ones I like but don't mind waiting for.

I also don't know which is a better money-maker for the companies--do they get more from six or eight issues of a particular title or from the trade paperback of those six or eight issues that eventually comes out?

On the whole, if I'm buying a book in trade form, I'm not in a big hurry for that particular comic. I don't scan the solicits for it, rushing to get it as soon as it's available--I'll wait until I get to a comic store, see what they happen to have in stock, and pick up what interests me. I don't, as a rule, order trades as part of my monthly comic box. (Other than Captain America, but that's the exception--I buy both floppies and trades of that one, because it's both a keeper and an edge-of-the-seater.) What I am saying is that I am not a regular purchaser of trades--I'll get them when I think about it. That's very different from the way I approach buying floppies.

Now, if I knew when to expect the trades out, things might be different. But as far as I can tell, there's no specific timeline provided for that to happen.

It would also be helpful to know not only when, but whether a given title will be out in trade form. Not that I expect to be handed that information--it could be seen as deterring the reader from buying the floppy, if they knew for sure that the title would be available in trade form someday. Just that it would be handy. :)